Bag of Bones: Chapters 13 &14 (pages 210-238)

I won't go into too much detail about Chapter 13, it consists of a long (and vile) dream-sleepwalking-ghost groping section where Mike Noonan has dream/ghost-sex with his dead wife Jo, the dead blues singer Sara Tidwell and the still alive Mattie. It's kind of disgusting to read and to be honest, I skipped a large part of it. The only thing of note is that the dream also features Jo's old typewriter she kept in her studio in the barn next door. At the end of Chapter 13 Mike wakes up in the morning from his ghost wet dream and decides to grab the typewriter. Magically he feels none of the panic and anxiety he did when he tried to type on his computer and is able to write eight pages for his next novel.
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Chapter 14 opens with Mike getting a phone call from Mattie and she's excited and sooo happy about the lawyer Mike got for her. She's thanking him profusely and the only thoughts he has are that those thank-you's are invitations to have sex. He's knows they're not but can't help thinking otherwise. Then Mike thinks about an Atlantic Monthly article he read by "some feminist" where she argues that men fantasize about women only as sexual objects not human beings with their own needs and feelings. The article argued that the ultimate male sexual fantasy was to have sex with "this shadow, this fantasy, this ghost." (page 238). King intends this passage to give some kind of greater psychological weight to the preceding chapter. I'm not buying it. It sounds like King wrote a chapter where his character has sex with a couple of ghosts and then looked for a way to rationalize it into greater meaning. Nice try.
Mike's lawyer then calls and updates him on the child-custody case. Things are looking better because the lawyer did some research and discovered that since Max Devore is not married there are only a few options as to who to leave Kyra to in the (likely) event that Max dies before the child is eighteen.
Max's own daughter is in an institution. His only living son is a gay middle-aged man with a "husband." Mike almost does a spit-take when the lawyer tells him the gay man is married...to a man. The book is only ten years old but I guess things have changed in a big way since then. I hear that Maine is now looking to legalize same-sex marriage. So these two factors leave no one really to leave the child with if Max dies (the conservative Maine judge would not give custody to a gay couple). The lawyer brings up the point that Max might marry Rogette Whitmore and then she could take custody of the child but Mike thinks that it would make little difference considering her advanced age.
A main theme of this chapter is that Mike now is able to write again. The phone calls keep interrupting his thought process. Mike is elated at his regained ability to write and feels that he has "lived more in the past five days than in the previous four years." He walks down to the lake and by the shore he starts to sob with relief because he feel he has been "reborn."
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Analysis:
Chapter 13 was not really creepy or scary, just weird and not very readable unless you like ghost-porn.
Chapter 14 was much better but it really served only to advance the plot points. The dialogue was nice and sharp and not too corny. The end of the chapter after Mike describes the plot of his new book, (something about a man accused of being a serial rapist who may or may not be innocent) is actually pretty moving. In two pages King makes us feel Mike's relief at being able to write again and how bad things must have been for him during those four years where he could not. Him breaking down and crying by the lake in relief and thanks was very effective. Nice job.